Their return.

Her hair is shorter, cropped at the shoulder. She's made a brave choice, bangs on curly hair. She leans forward over her newspaper. (Yes, it's hers. The early bird of the house. The others will have their news delivered in hindsight, after dinner, on the couch, a cup of tea or wine on the side table.) She pulls at the hair, impatient, willing it to grow. It falls loose, masking her face like the ears of a cocker spaniel.

He can't deny it's cute. He preferred her hair longer, the forceful part down the middle, how it fell over her shoulders, how she tucked it under a fleece headband in winter, something resembling an 80s tennis player. The day she showed up at the station after the cut she wouldn't look him in the eye. He knew. He knew he had one chance to get this right.

"Now, I can see your eyes all the time."

Her husky blues.

Young love.


**I'll be back January 7, 2008. Warm wishes and see you soon!**

Seen Reading on Quirky Nomads

Perfect timing!

Seen Reading gets the Quirky Nomads treatment. Five vignettes performed by a lovely voice actor. My words with a British accent. Hullo!

P.S. Saw one half of The Young Lovers this morning. He's lost the baby fat over summer. And his curly locks are almost past his shoulders.

But where is she?

Yonge Line, a little different.

Caucasian woman, early thirties, with blonde hair pulled back in a clip. She wears a thick platinum wedding ring and natural polish on freshly manicured nails. Her lip gloss matches. Stilo. Her nostrils are small and dainty and she suddenly seems familiar in a, Oh, don't tell me...Izzy from Grey's Anatomy! Thank god, that didn't take long.

Two Little Girls in Blue, Mary Higgins Clark (Simon & Schuster)

Page 218:

"Then this is it for us. Good luck, Clint." The Pied Piper broke the connection, waited, then dialed the number of a private plane service. "I need a plane to leave in one hour from Teterboro, to land at the airport nearest to Chatham on Cape Cod," he ordered.

He holds the pole at arm's length and shoulder height, snapping his Metro to get the page to stand straight. His fingers are smaller than I would have imagined, his nails tiny and swollen, alternating hang nails. He grips and regrips the pole and it's clear that he's not sure of himself, his gravity in this car, in this situation. Come to think of it, I've never seen him standing anywhere but in the door, that one time sitting, and this far from her. His back has always been to something. Now he's wide open and out of sorts. There's something more though, an edge to his face. The softness is missing. I watch his reflection. He looks up, jerks his head around and, finding me, settles. We consider one another. I watch as he looks away from my reflection, looking directly at me now, and smiles. The corner of my mouth twitches, my half-smile, uncommitted. I see my chest exhale quickly. I'm wearing headphones but it occurs to me that outside the music I've made a little noise that signals a short laugh. He goes back to his paper and I turn to face him. There it is. He's shaving. Within the last week. A strip of stubble that, on him, looks like dirt. From boy to man. Is this why she stands over there?

She sneezes, once, twice, and looks into her glove, then at me. Apparently, I've blessed her.

Yonge Line, last car, facing the back window.

Hispanic girl, 15, with curly hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, wearing a salmon pink jacket and fuzzy pink socks, holding an electric blue sucker.

Truth About Forever, Sarah Dessen (Speak)

Page 1:

Jason was going to Brain Camp.

The Young Lovers were crammed into the doorway. She looked paler than ever, her blue eyes popping neon. He was struggling to pull the bottom of his black and red ski pants over the top of his boots. He circled his shoulders, bundled too tightly inside his winter gear, his body cramped. His hair was growing out fast, itching under his tuque. He flexed his ears, bobbed his brow, trying to get relief without having to raise a hand. It was unbearable.

He shuffled his weight, foot to foot, rocking between her and the passenger behind him, a fey gentleman pressed sharp from head to toe, his cologne crisp and clean, the pointed tip of his black dress shoes extending inches past his natural toe. The boy had already smiled sweetly once, when the car came to a sudden stop, halfway through the tunnel. The man had lurched forward placing the pads of his index and middle fingers against the boy's lower spine. The boy had turned, their faces within breathing distance. And then the soft, forgiving smile as he tried to take in something otherworldly about the man. He'd turned back, his eyes meeting hers, quizzical. As his glasses slid down his face he imagined a barbell piercing the bridge of his nose, frames held in place with magnetic pull. Then it hit him. Seeking the man's reflection in the glass doors he saw the shimmer of something embedded in the man's eye. Two metallic implants.

I missed you two.

The Young Lovers riding to school. He's bundled up in an army green jacket, striped scarf round and round his neck, his corduroy cap perched atop his freshly shorn curls. He leans heavy on his hand, staring at the floor. She sits adjacent to him, reading, tucked tight inside a long black parka, her husky blue eyes darting back and forth between the page and the back of his head. The toe of her shoe rests gently against the heel of his.

The Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin (HarperPaperbacks)

About 75 pages in:

The whole world, the softness of the air, the fall of sunlight across the hills, the very pull of the heavier gravity on his body, asserted to him that this was home indeed, his race's world; and all its beauty was his birthright.

They're both wearing headphones.

(Follow "His" and "Hers" for audio. This day, I wondered more what they were listening to.)

His:

where are we?
what the hell is going on?
the dust has only just begun to form
crop circles in the carpet
sinking, feeling

spin me 'round again
and rub my eyes,
this can't be happening
when busy streets a mess with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy

hide and seek
trains and sewing machines
all those years
they were here first...*

Hers:

Maybe I'm amazed at the way you love me all the time
Maybe I'm afraid of the way I love you
Maybe I'm amazed at the way you pulled me out of time
and hung me on a line
Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you

Maybe I'm a girl and maybe I'm a lonely girl
who's in the middle of something
that she doesn't really understand

Maybe I'm a girl and maybe you're the only man
who could ever help me
Baby, won't you help me understand...**

* Hide and Seek, Imogen Heap
** Maybe I'm Amazed (Paul McCartney), covered by Jem

Young Lovers on the Yonge Line

I wondered when I would see them again. She is pale as porcelain, a fleece headband covering her forehead and ears. He wears a corduroy cap with rim, his curls hanging loose over his exposed ears. They sit knee to knee, sharing the daily paper.

metro, Free Daily News Group Inc. (Bill McDonald)

Page 10:

Memories of two violent tragedies seemed as fresh as the white roses placed on 14 steel monuments yesterday in a small memorial park not far from Montreal's Ecole polytechnique.

She stood and adjusted her backpack. He continued to stare ahead at the article. She tapped his cap like they'd been married for fifty years and needed reminding. "Come on," she'd said. "Time to go."

It's a date.

The young teenaged lovers were on the subway this morning. She was wearing her pistachio green overcoat. He was sporting a crop of red blemishes on his chin. They teetered an arm length apart, their heads within inches of one another. She was carefully wording a sentence he struggled to catch. She mouthed it three times, four. The edges of his lips curled as she realized he knew perfectly well what she was saying, he just wanted the excuse to look at her for this long, this closely. She cuffed his arm with the back of her hand.

"Christmas is coming."
"Christmas is coming."
"Christmas is coming."
"Christmas is--you idiot!"

He smiled that half-smile; something he saw in a film. Unless at such a young age, he really will turn out to be a sexy man, an attentive man, a purposefully sexy and attentive man. His smile drew me in and he saw me. He turned the smile on me and I blushed, turning to face my reflection in the door; yes, standing in the door. Caught on two counts.

She continued, "This Saturday? We'll do it this Saturday."

I'd missed the rest of the conversation. I suspect they're going shopping. Which is to say, that in the Saturday crush, their hands will most certainly brush, they'll share food court poutine, he'll offer to carry her bag from the Disney Store, and they'll stand face-to-face on the escalator, their first kiss floating towards ground level.

(She held a book, her finger holding her place. I couldn't see the cover. But, let's face it, if I could hardly concentrate, we can't blame her. See the next post for more of the same ol', same ol'.)

Bloor Line, on the way to school for you

Caucasion girl, 16-17, long brown hair, haunting Husky-blue eyes, pistachio-green long spring coat (out of season), white pants (out of season), black sneakers, adorned with heartbroken boy who leans against the rail watching her read, unruly brown curls falling down past his eyes and the puffy, wet lips that only young teenaged boys can have.

Catch-22, Joseph Heller (Simon & Schuster)

About 80 pages in:

"That's not what justice is," the colonel jeered, and began pounding the table again with his big fat hand. "That's what Karl Marx is. I'll tell you what justice is. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night squeaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning.

You don't know you're pretty. I wonder, does he see the pretty? The other day you were reading a graphic novel and he looked as if he could cry. He loves you, you know. You wreck him. And he doesn't even hate you for it. I've seen you two before. I sense a love story coming on.